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Nintendo announced a few more details for Wii, but not many

Nintendo's E3 announcement just finished up, but was surprisingly short on details.  Nintendo's Executive Vice President, Reginald Fils-Aime, opened the conference claiming that price and availability for the console will remain a secret for a little while longer, but left out the tidbit that Wii is "more fun for less money" and "you'll be playing Wii in the fourth quarter of 2006."

Nintendo stresses that the Wii is supposed to be the "every-man" console.  The console is supposed to bring gaming to everyone, particularly people who have not played console games before. 

The announcement featured dozens of gamers using the new motion sensitive controller.  Like the new Playstation 3 control pad, the Nintendo Wii controller will feature six degrees of freedom over the main controller and an external dongle (dubbed by Nintendo as the "nunchuk") for the other hand.  Nintendo's Wii relies much more on the motion sensitivity of the controller than its Sony counterpart.  There is also a small speaker inside the Wii console pad, as well as a built in rumble feature.  Fils-Aime claims this speaker will provide an extra level of surround sound.

Nintendo announced a few games at the event as well.  The newest Zelda will launch with the console, but it was not clear whether or not the new Mario Galaxy will be a launch title or not.  We will be on the show floor tomorrow giving one of the 27 games already in playable demo form a test run just to see how effective the new design is.  Wii will also have a "Virtual Console" that allows the system to emulate older titles.

Saturo Iwata, Nintendo's President, finished up the conference announcement. Both Iwata and Fils-Aime stressed the point that Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS are "disruptive" technologies, that break the norm set by Microsoft and Sony.  Iwata claims Wii will have a feature called Wii Connect 24, meaning the system will be constantly connected to the internet and constantly in standby mode, even when the system is in "off" mode. This way, players can receive messages or "gifts" from other gamers, even when no one is on the console.

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Way more to it than "6 degrees of freedom"
By Zurtex on 5/9/2006 4:34:03 PM , Rating: 3
As has been mentioned above, it is not like Sony's controller at all.

The 'nunchuck' in it has more advanced movement detection than Sony's controller. Nintendo's main controller will measure, angle, position, speed, acceleration and has a speaker in it, this is vastly more than Sony's.

From what I can tell, Sony's 6 degrees of freedom are:

Tilt Forward
Tilt Backwards
Tilt Left
Tilt right
Detect upwards motion
Detect downwards motion

Plus it will have no rumble. Please edit your article appropriately.




RE: Way more to it than "6 degrees of freedom"
By Trisped on 5/9/2006 5:53:46 PM , Rating: 2
Agreed, please present the facts as they are. Don't diss the Nintendo just because PS3 stole its ideas.


RE: Way more to it than "6 degrees of freedom"
By The Cheeba on 5/9/2006 6:00:16 PM , Rating: 2
get a grip. He said they were alike in the fact they both use motion control.


RE: Way more to it than "6 degrees of freedom"
By Zurtex on 5/9/2006 6:33:46 PM , Rating: 2
No, the offending sentance is:

"Like the new Playstation 3 control pad, the Nintendo Wii controller will feature six degrees of freedom over the main controller and an external dongle (dubbed by Nintendo as the "nunchuk") for the other hand. "

Read that a couple of times, the sentence reads as though Nintendo said there's would have "six degrees of freedom" which they didn't, that's Sony's tag line. It also sounds the PS3 one will have an "external dongle" which it doesn't.

The article was clearly made in a rush with little thought to sentence structure. It can't be that much effort to change it, I've seen them change the entire premise of an article before.


By Zurtex on 5/9/2006 6:35:11 PM , Rating: 2
P.S, I spotted my own mistake, if I could edit it I would.


RE: Way more to it than "6 degrees of freedom"
By Trisped on 5/10/2006 12:29:25 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Like the new Playstation 3 control pad, the Nintendo Wii controller will
Implies that Nintendo is copying the PS3 controller, not the other way around. I don't think it is fair for Sony to capitalize off of Nintendo's innovations buy copy-cat-ing with an inferior product, but getting all the positive advertising of news sites.


By doctor sam adams on 5/11/2006 7:44:58 AM , Rating: 2
im sure it is not all the news sites, but typical anandtech high school newspaper-caliber editing.


RE: Way more to it than "6 degrees of freedom"
By McTwist on 5/9/2006 5:58:22 PM , Rating: 2
"6 degrees of freedom" refers to the three axes of motion and rotations about those three axes.

So they are:
Forward/backward
Up/down
Left/right
Yaw
Pitch
Roll

If you can measure all those you can pinpoint your relative position, velcoity, and orientation in space by intergrating the measurements of the accelerometers and gyroscopes.

All this is, of course, assuming that Sony is using the real definition of 6DOF and the version you propose.

No need to edit the article.


RE: Way more to it than "6 degrees of freedom"
By Zurtex on 5/9/2006 6:29:00 PM , Rating: 2
First off, from reading people who've played it there is no way it measures all of that.

It doesn't seem to measure velocity but rather acceleration and you can't even work out "relative position with just that. From reading things carefully they don't even seem to have acceleration in all 3 spacial dimensions.

You can't use it as a pointer device like the Wii, you can't use it nearly as accurately as say using it as a Tennis racket as they did on the Wii. The article needs editing!

I am waiting for more information to come out of course like everyone else, but it really doesn't seem to do nearly as much as you mentioned. Or at least from what little game play previews have come out so far.


RE: Way more to it than "6 degrees of freedom"
By PT2006 on 5/9/2006 7:06:34 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
First off, from reading people who've played it there is no way it measures all of that.


You mean the one kid who played it at the news conference?

This is really a nothing point, there are six spacial dimensions, and all six are measured by the wii remote (and the ps3 thing). I fail to see how a device can magically come up with 8 dimensions or how one could measure acceleration but not velocity... both remotes do the same thing, it would just seem that the wii remote is more dependant on motion control.


By McTwist on 5/9/2006 7:14:20 PM , Rating: 2
Who said anything about 8 dimensions?

You can measure acceleration with an accelerometer and angular acceleration with a gyroscope. You don't need to know anything about the velocity to measure the acceleration acting on an object.


RE: Way more to it than "6 degrees of freedom"
By Zurtex on 5/9/2006 8:30:28 PM , Rating: 2
No, I mean websites such as gamespot who have had chance to play on it.

Furthermore to add to the post above me, Nintendo seem to be indicating the 'nunchuck' has an accelerometer and a gyroscope in it. The Wii controller does so much more.


By PT2006 on 5/9/2006 10:22:58 PM , Rating: 2
It's "nunchuk"


RE: Way more to it than "6 degrees of freedom"
By McTwist on 5/9/2006 7:07:11 PM , Rating: 2
Well, I'm just telling you what 6DOF means. And that's it. If people who've played aren't seeing that then either Sony isn't really 6DOF or it hasn't been fully implemented.

Of course it doesn't measure velocity. That's not what I said either; I said it uses measurements from accelerometers and gyroscopes which measure translational and rotational accelerations, respectively. And you can work out relative velocity and position and orientation just from that. You just take the integral of the measured acceleration (or haven't you taken calculus yet?) to get relative velocity and the integral again to get relative position. I say "relative" because in order to get your absolute position you need to know the initial conditions. I'm assuming the controller doesn't include some form of GPS (not that GPS would be accurate enough). These integrations can also be performed for the angular rates and orientation but it's more complicated because the equations are non-linear.

I'm not saying that Sony is using something they aren't, I was merely giving an accurate definition of 6DOF. And the artcile is still okay. All it says is that Sony is claiming that their controller can measure 6DOF just like Nintendo is. I'm not saying what the controller does either, merely what they claim it can do.


RE: Way more to it than "6 degrees of freedom"
By Knish on 5/9/2006 7:08:23 PM , Rating: 2
I can't remember if it was this site or the other one that had a sign reading "Don't Feed The Trolls"


By McTwist on 5/9/2006 7:15:06 PM , Rating: 2
Amen


By Zurtex on 5/9/2006 8:26:29 PM , Rating: 2
I am on my 2nd year in a masters of mathematics, I took calculus over 4 years ago. You can work out relative velocity from acceleration, you can not work out relative position without assuming an initial value of velocity surely?

I'm not an engineer or physicist, so I did not realise there was a formal definition of "6 degrees of freedom" and I much apologize for that.



By Trogdor on 5/9/2006 2:03:18 PM , Rating: 1
Ummm it's not like Sony's controller. Sony just ripped off what they could from Nintendo's previous unveiling. All it's got is tilt sensors, and looks to just be a quick hack job to have a "me too" badge. Nintendo has got not just tilt, but complete freedom of movement as well as determining exact locations in 3D space, pointing ability, distance, everything.




By brownba on 5/9/2006 2:33:29 PM , Rating: 3
word.
it should not say "Like the new Playstation 3 control pad...",
that disrespects what nintendo has developed.


By drxploder on 5/9/2006 5:22:48 PM , Rating: 3
I don't hate sony, but it's kinda funny how they've been using what is basically an SNES controller w/ 2 more triggers and analog for 10 years.


By Trisped on 5/9/2006 5:51:11 PM , Rating: 2
Agreeded, stress the idea theft. Sony didn't come up with it and since it was added so late in the game, probably won't do much with it.

Nintendo on the other hand has fully intergrated the remote controller into their system.